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Abortion Wait Times in Texas: the Shrinking Capacity of Facilities and the Potential Impact of Closing Non-ASC Clinics

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Abortion Wait Times in Texas: the Shrinking Capacity of Facilities and the Potential Impact of Closing Non-ASC Clinics Texas Policy Evaluation Project RESEARCH BRIEF Oct. 5, 2015 Abortion Wait Times in Texas: The Shrinking Capacity of Facilities and the Potential Impact of Closing Non-ASC Clinics INTRODUCTION Over the past four years, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project has closely monitored which facilities providing abortion care in the state are open.1 Since April 2013, when debate began around the bill that became House Bill 2 (HB2), the number of facilities providing abortion care has dropped from 41 to 18. According to our interviews with facility staff, many of these closures have been related to difficulty obtaining hospital admitting privileges for physicians at the facilities, while others have been related to difficulty complying with the requirement that facilities meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs). This ASC requirement is currently enjoined by the US Supreme Court while it determines if it will consider hearing a legal challenge to HB2 in its next term.a To determine how well the existing facilities are meeting the demand for services and if the clinics’ capacity to meet the demand differs across the state, we have performed monthly mystery calls to open facilities providing abortion care since November 2013, when the admitting privileges requirement went into effect. These calls sought to document wait time, defined as the number of days between when the mystery caller telephoned the facility and when the next consultation appointment was available. With a time-sensitive procedure such as abortion, wait times serve as a measure of facility capacity to meet the demand for services. In this Research Brief, we present the results of our monitoring of abortion wait times since November 2014. Services were disrupted across the state in October 2014 when the ASC requirement was briefly enforced; this Brief focuses on the period after the non-ASC clinics reopened. We particularly focus on wait times at facilities in Dallas and Ft. Worth after a large-volume provider in Dallas closed in June 2015. We also explore the wait times at the existing nine ASCs in Texas. In early 2014, we found that only 22% of all abortions were being provided by the ASCs.1 We suggested that it would be difficult for those facilities to increase their capacity sufficiently to meet the demand for all abortions in the state, while proponents of HB2 said that there was no reason to believe that they could not meet this demand. Finally, we explore what the impact of the closure of all the non-ASC clinics in the state might be in terms of increasing wait times and the resultant increase in second-trimester abortion in Texas. aTo learn more about the provisions of HB2, see the Texas Policy Evaluation Project’s HB2 Fact Sheet. Page 1 RESULTS: Wait Time to First Appointment Since November 2014, wait times for an abortion appointment have varied in Austin, Dallas and Ft. Worth, while they have been more stable in Houston and San Antonio. Wait times appear to be increasing in Dallas and Ft. Worth after the recent closure of a large-volume provider. Wait times have fluctuated greatly in Austin, where there are only two open facilities. Wait times are also long at some of the ASCs, indicating that they are unable to meet the demand for services among the patients they serve. Figure 1: Austin Austin In Austin, wait times increased over the summer of 2015 to as long as 23 days at one facility (Figure 1). The average wait time was consistently more than 10 days between July and September 2015. A significant number of women were exposed to these long wait times; between November 2013 and April 2014, 12.2% of all abortions performed in Texas were estimated to have been performed in Austin.1 Dallas & Ft. Worth At least one clinic not Mean wait time Range * scheduling due to Between November 2013 and April 2014, 28.7% of volume all abortions performed in Texas were estimated to have been performed in Dallas and Ft. Worth.1 Figure 2: Dallas The mean wait time at the open Dallas facilities had been stable at 5 days or less over the past year until a clinic that performed 350-500 procedures per month closed in June 2015 (Figure 2). This left only two open facilities in Dallas. Subsequently, wait times increased to as much as 20 days. In the July 2015 round of mystery calls, one facility was unable to schedule patients at all. Results of the mystery calls to the two open facilities in Ft. Worth have been similar, with Figure 3: Ft. Worth wait times increasing to as long as 23 days at one facility since June 2015 (Figure 3). Between December 2014 and February 2015, one of the facilities in Ft. Worth was not providing abortion care, and during that period the wait time increased to 13 days at the one open facility in the city. The increasing wait times in the Dallas- Ft. Worth area are indicative of decreasing capacity to meet demand for abortion services. Page 2 RESULTS, cont. Houston Figure 4: Houston In contrast, wait times in Houston, where there are currently six open facilities, have averaged less than 5 days (Figure 4). Between November 2013 and April 2014, 37.6% of all abortions performed in Texas were estimated to have been performed in Houston or Beaumont.1 The clinic in Beaumont has since closed, and Houston is the nearest facility for patients to obtain an abortion. San Antonio Figure 5: San Antonio Over the past year, average wait times also have been consistently less than 5 days in San Antonio, where there are three open ASCs providing abortion care (Figure 5). Between November 2013 and April 2014, 13% of all abortions performed in Texas were estimated to have been performed in San Antonio.1 At least one clinic not Mean wait time Range * scheduling due to volume Wait times have also been short (1 day or less) in El Paso, where there has been one open clinic until the end of September; there are now two open clinics in El Paso. In McAllen, where there is one open clinic, wait times have fluctuated between 1 and 8 days since this facility reopened in November 2014. When we examined the wait times at the ASC facilities, we found that these also varied, but at every monthly mystery call, there was at least one ASC with a wait time of longer than 10 days. • In January 2015, one ASC had a wait time of 13 days • In July 2015, one ASC had a wait time of 21 days and one had a wait time of 20 days • In September 2015, one ASC had a wait time of 20 days and one had a wait time of 13 days. The long wait time at some of the ASCs suggests that these facilities are not meeting the existing demand for services. Page 3 RESULTS: Are Wait Times Likely to Increase If All Non-ASC Clinics Close in Texas? We estimated the number of annual abortions performed per open facility based on the number of procedures performed in each metropolitan area between November 2013 and April 2014 (see Table 1).1 Based on the number of procedures performed in Dallas-Ft. Worth, with the closure of the clinic in Dallas, the annual number of abortions performed per facility increased from approximately 3,500 to 4,400, resulting in the increased wait times described above. Assuming that all of the patients who previously obtained abortions in South Texas and El Paso would obtain them in San Antonio if the non-ASC clinics were forced to close, the annual number of abortions performed per facility in San Antonio would be about 4,400. Although it is likely that wait times would increase in San Antonio, since this number of patients per facility is similar to the current situation in Dallas-Ft. Worth, for the modeling that follows, we conservatively assumed that wait times would not increase in San Antonio. If the non-ASC clinics were to close, the annual number of abortions performed per facility in Austin would increase from about 3,700 to almost 7,500. This ratio in Houston would increase from about 3,900 to over 11,000. If the one non-ASC clinic in Ft. Worth were to close, the ratio in Dallas-Ft. Worth would increase to about 5,900. All of these ratios are much higher than the current ratio in Dallas-Ft. Worth, indicating that if demand remained constant, wait times would be very likely to increase to at least the levels we are currently observing in Dallas and Ft. Worth, if not longer. a There are also two open clinics in El Paso and one open clinic in McAllen. These non-ASC clinics are not included here. b We assume that abortions that had previously been provided in South Texas (Corpus Christi and now McAllen) and in El Paso would be provided in San Antonio if the non-ASC clinics were to close. Page 4 RESULTS: Estimating the Impact of Wait Times on Second-Trimester Abortion Figure 6 shows the estimated proportion of abortions performed after 12 weeks as a result of the wait times increasing in cities (other than San Antonio) if the non-ASC clinics close because of HB2. As wait times increase, the estimated proportion of abortions performed in the second trimester increases. For example, if the average wait time in Austin, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Houston were to increase to 10 days, the proportion of abortion performed in the second trimester would increase from 10.5% to 13.5%.
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